Top 12 Teaching and Learning Articles for 2012, part 1

As another year draws to a close, the editorial team at Faculty Focus looks back on some of the top articles of the past year. Throughout 2012, we published approximately 250 articles. The articles covered a wide range of topics – from group work to online learning. In a two-part series, which will run today and Wednesday, we’re revealing the top 12 articles for 2012. Each article’s popularity ranking is based on a combination of the number of reader comments and social shares, e-newsletter open and click-thru rates, web traffic and other reader engagement metrics.

Today’s post lists articles 7-12, starting with number 12.
12. Classroom Discussion: Professors Share Favorite Strategies for Engaging Students
On The Teaching Professor’s LinkedIn Group we asked members to share some of the strategies they use to engage students in discussion, manage the dominant talkers and the nontalkers, and steer a discussion that’s gone off track. Nearly three dozen faculty members shared their techniques for prompting discussion. Continue reading »

11. Using “Frameworks” to Enhance Teaching and Learning
The tool I call a “framework” is a visual structure to capture students’ thinking. It has a non-linear format and provides writing space to record what students are thinking about course content as well as how they are thinking about it. I generally assign frameworks on a weekly basis, to be completed with course reading outside of class. I collect them weekly, when assigned reading is due, which helps students stay accountable to the reading. Continue reading »

10. Mapping Success: Essential Elements of an Effective Online Learning Experience
An online course is like walking into a foreign land with an entire map laid out, but having no sense of the land’s origin or how to navigate the terrain. How the instructor formats and interacts with the class will ultimately determine the student’s travel experience. The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of how the elements of an online course are integrated such that they form a cohesive whole that creates easy travel based upon instructor presence, appropriate feedback, and easy navigation for students. Continue reading »

9. Deep Learning vs. Surface Learning: Getting Students to Understand the Difference
Sometimes our understanding of deep learning isn’t all that deep. Typically, it’s defined by what it is not. It’s not memorizing only to forget and it’s not reciting or regurgitating what really isn’t understood and can’t be applied. The essence of deep learning is understanding—true knowing. That’s a good start but it doesn’t do much to help students see the difference between deep and surface learning or to help persuade them that one is preferable to the other. Continue reading »

8. A Syllabus Tip: Embed Big Questions
Much has been written about the course syllabus. It’s an important tool for classroom management, for setting the tone, for outlining expectations, and for meeting department and university requirements. It’s an essential document in a higher education course, but do your students read it? And if they do read it, do they see the real purpose of the course beyond the attendance policy and exam dates? Continue reading »

7. Five Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching
Although learner-centered teaching and efforts to involve students have a kind of bread and butter relationship, they are not the same thing. In the interest of more definitional precision, I’d like to propose five characteristics of teaching that make it learner-centered. Continue reading »

See what teaching and learning articles topped out our list here.